Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Friend's Project: Accurizing "My Little Pony" Toys

The other day I was in my workshop when my old friend Chris stopped by and asked for some advice on moldmaking for a project he's been working on for a while. Being someone who knows things about making molds for small parts, I was glad to help. Then he pulled out these things:

I promised I wouldn't make fun of this grown man for collecting the figures from the new My Little Pony cartoon series. Instead, I'll point out that these toys are sold with brushable doll hair and there's apparently a whole community of collectors who have been lamenting the fact that the ponies' hair looks nothing like it does in the cartoon. Enter Chris.Using polymer clay, Chris has been painstakingly sculpting out perfect pony coifs (and at least one hat), then shaving (or maybe plucking, I didn't ask) the doll hair from the toys and replacing it with his work. His deviantart page started getting so much traffic from collectors begging him to offer some for sale that he finally decided it was a good idea to mold and cast plastic pony wigs.Using translucent platinum cure silicone for the molds and Legos for mold boxes, he set about making his pony wigs. In the end, the only help he needed was a bit of advice on where to put in vents and pour spouts for the resin. Here's some of this resin castings lined up with the Lego mold boxes in the background:And here's some of his finished work:

The craftsmanship is remarkable and he's definitely putting in the hours to match everything perfectly to the show. If you'd like to see more, check out his deviantart page: http://otakusquirrel.deviantart.com/.